


An Awfully Big Adventure

by ViciousRhythm



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Peter Pan AU, bc let's be real when haven't i tweaked a trope i'm writing for?, but they're kids at the beginning, fairytale retelling, hints at stormpilot, late 1800's setting, there's gonna be some story acrobatics here, various povs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7835857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViciousRhythm/pseuds/ViciousRhythm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All children, except one, grow up."<br/>A retelling of the Peter Pan story, with Ben as our resident eternal child. Deliberately different from the original story in quite a few places, but hopefully still faithful to my favorite fairytale of all time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All This Has Happened Before

It’s quiet in the orphanage, and Finn can’t sleep. He’s always the one who can’t sleep, and Poe is always the one who crawls into Finn’s bed because he somehow knows, but Rey is the one who tells them stories and fills the night so it doesn’t seem so dark and quiet. This is such a night, dark as pitch and silent as the grave, the only sounds being the distant echo of beggars moving about in the streets. It’s a stark reminder that Finn was once only a step away from living such a life before Rey found him – or rather, they found each other – and then they found Poe.

They’ve been as good as siblings since Poe brought them to the Stockwell Orphanage two years ago. Rey and Finn even share a birthday marked on the day they met Poe in the absence of knowing a birthdate of their own. Though the mistresses call them twins, Rey and Finn of course look nothing alike, and are at least a year apart in age besides, not that they can be sure of it. Poe is older still, if only be the smallest margin and they can only guess so because he’s the tallest of them.

Poe at least had once known his parents, though they passed years ago. At fourteen, he is nearly too old to be sleeping in the communal hall with the other boys and will need to be thinking about work very soon. At a guessed thirteen, Rey is in the same predicament, while Finn has the comfort of his probably twelve years affording him a bit more time with childhood. In the darkness of the night, this is a small comfort, especially knowing the pair he has come to think of as his brother and sister will soon be moving on without him.

Finn hardly has the time to let the thoughts roil in his stomach properly before Poe is sneaking his way under the blanket so put his ice-cold feet against Finn’s shins, shocking him out of his melancholy.

“I can hear you thinking across the hall,” Poe whispers sharply, good-naturedly chastising. “You’re keeping me up.”

“Am not,” Finn defends automatically, kicking back at Poe’s freezing toes until they can both settle almost-comfortably in the bed. It is, by all rights, too small to fit them, but the comfort of having each other near is worth the risk of rolling to the floor.

“I’m about to fetch Rey,” Poe presses on. “She’s always got a tale to put you to sleep when you get like this.”

Finn blows a raspberry at him – quietly, so the mistresses won’t come in to check on the noises.

“You don’t need to fetch me.”

Both boys jump slightly, always caught off-guard by Rey’s uncanny ability to creep about silently. They’ve given up hide and seek with her long ago for the express reason that Rey could manage to sneak away to a new hiding spot with either of them a foot from her nose and none the wiser. She covers her giggles at the boys’ predictable grumbling over being surprised and pats her hands over their legs until they pull them up so she can sit.

Finn had thought it to be pitch black, but he can still see the important bits of his family like this. Rey tucking her pale legs under her nightdress at the foot of his bed, the white flash of Poe’s grin meaning he’s forgiven Rey for nearly giving them a heart attack again. It’s true enough Rey’s storytelling helps Finn drift to sleep with the pleasant thoughts of a living happily ever after, but the best story could never compete with having Rey and Poe near for putting him at ease.

“What shall it be tonight, lads?” Rey asks, eyes bright enough Finn knows she was nowhere near sleep either. He thinks, sometimes, that she enjoys coming to tell them stories far more than they enjoy hearing them. “Adventure or romance?”

“Both,” Poe chimes in. “The best have both.”

And so she tells them a tale, and it must be one she’s made up herself. Rey’s good at that, to the chagrin of her teachers. She spends more time coming up with stories than she does on her sums by a vast margin, but her stories are enthralling, taking the best parts of all the ones she’s ever heard. Tonight’s story is about a princess who falls in love with a pirate, but only after finding her long-lost twin and saving them both from certain doom with cleverness and mercy.

Finn’s eyes begin to droop as Rey is describing the celebration aboard the pirate armada with the downfall of the rogue captain who had been holding them all captive to his whims. It’s a happy ending as always, with the princess and her brother embracing and a kiss for the man she loves, Rey’s eyes going soft. She gets that way with the romances sometimes, and Finn thinks of her as a girl then. She doesn’t seem one most of the time.

It may be a dream – it most likely is – but Finn thinks, just before his eyes close and he falls asleep to Poe’s whuffling snores, that he sees a shadow at the window.

+

Rey is not prepared to be an adult, not by a long shot, but adulthood is coming for her soon regardless and so she must at least pretend to be ready. It’s never been a good idea to appear unprepared for a thing when it comes, a lesson she learned early on, perhaps before she can remember learning anything else save her own name. And so Rey plays very well that she is ready for the mistresses telling her she must soon consider employment and begin thinking about finding herself a man to marry if she is able. There are only a few precious years before Rey will be something of a lady, orphan or no, and she’s turning out to be lovely enough that some lowborn man would be willing enough to marry her if she knows her numbers and letters and how to keep a house.

Her lessons begin to change so that Rey learns when to wear gloves and how to fold her hands in her lap and who in society ought to be called ‘sir’ and how to bake bread. Poe, in the boys’ classes, is learning slightly different things as well – being encouraged to choose a trade if it suits him or otherwise the drilled in mathematics that make for a good clerk or banker. Poe himself wants to join the Navy and Rey wishes desperately she either had a passion like Poe or more time like Finn.

No one is trying to make Finn grow up. Perhaps because he is still much smaller than she or Poe (Rey suspects he might not be twelve yet, actually), or perhaps because Finn has shown no interest in growing up himself. His armor, like Rey’s, is well in place, though his is a very different sort. Finn lets things roll off of him, unchanging in the face of life’s erratic tides. He has ever been the same since Rey met him, determined in his goodness and inspiring for it. Rey cannot imagine Finn becoming a man and falling to the realities of all it entails.

“Miss Kenobi.” Rey’s head snaps up from where she has been packing away her school supplies, wide eyes finding the mistress at the front of the classroom watching her. Though she’d adopted the last name of a long-dead politician in the absence of one of her own, Rey recognizes Kenobi as her own name and hops to with all due haste at her teacher’s stern expression.

“Headmistress has determined that you will be moved into the ladies’ dormitory tomorrow morning,” she says matter-of-factly. “If you would be so kind as to prepare your things tonight so that they can be collected in the morning.”

Rey nods obediently because it is not a suggestion, but she can’t stop a protest from falling off her tongue.

“But Poe hasn’t had to leave the boys’ hall,” she starts before she can silence herself. “And he’s a year older than I am.”

“Young mister Dameron,” her teacher starts, pointedly raising her brows, “is none of your concern. And in fact one ought to concern themselves less with the boys of this orphanage when one is on the cusp of becoming a young lady.”

“Yes, miss,” Rey says, ducking her head and turning to leave the room. She doesn’t run because they’ve already taught her that a lady never runs, but once Rey is out of sight of the mistress, she does move rather a lot more quickly. It could be called running, but then, Rey is not officially a lady until tomorrow morning and she must tell Finn and Poe as soon as humanly possible.

They take the news as well as can be expected, given that Rey didn’t want to receive it herself, much less deliver her sentence to her friends. Poe rails against the unfairness for long enough that he wears himself out for a bit, making way for Rey and Finn’s more quiet discussion of what they might do now.

“They won’t let me stay much longer,” Rey says, despondently picking at a loose thread on her dress. It’s an unbecoming habit, but she frankly doesn’t care. “They never let girls stay long after moving to the ladies’ dormitories.”

“They might make you a mistress,” Finn offers, his tone evenly split between disgust and hope. It would mean Rey could stay longer, but it would also mean she’d be expected to live at the orphanage into perpetuity and she’d be one of the mistresses that the children only mostly tolerate.

“More likely I’ll have to find a job soon,” Rey scowls. “And then a husband, so I don’t have to keep the job, and then a job again because I’ll have children.” She sighs and drops ungracefully to sit on Poe’s bed. “My life is over. I shall never have fun again.”

“Don’t say that,” Poe cut in. “Perhaps you can join the Navy with me. If we cut off your hair…”

“I’m not cutting off my hair,” Rey snaps indignantly, earning a slight grin from Poe. That was his intent, she realizes, and is grateful for his friendship and preemptively misses both him and Finn. “Besides, imagine how embarrassed you would be when I made the cut to join the Queen’s Navy and you were told to try again next year.”

Finn laughs as Poe splutters in insult and Rey’s loves her little family fiercely. If she must be a lady, so be it, but she will at least enjoy her last night before being sequestered to the much stricter ladies’ quarters. So she sneaks out of the girls’ hall in the middle of the night, blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cloak, and perches herself on Finn’s bed as she has so many nights, and tells her brothers a story.

It’s a grand one – one that Rey hasn’t quite found the ending to yet, but it starts with a boy who is born a slave and discovers he has magic inside him. She tells of him being rescued from slavery to learn how to wield his magic and be a warrior for good. He meets a charming young woman who has no magic, but enough smarts and will to make up for it, and the boy fights a valiant battle while the girl fights one of her own to defend her people.

She knows they fall in love in the end, but Rey doesn’t get to the end before Finn and Poe are both asleep. And thank God for that, because she has no idea how the story ends. She has many ideas, of course. Perhaps the girl is too good for the boy, and they are friends but nothing more. Perhaps his magic is his calling and they are marvelous partners, lovers and warriors together. Or perhaps, cruelest of all, his magic cannot save her from the battles, and the boy grows to realize his great power can never save or make up for the one thing he craves – love.

She’s still thinking about it when Rey shivers, noticing a chill from the slightly open window. The mistresses believe moving air is good for the lungs, so they’re never properly closed, and Rey rises to open it further for the bracing chill of the night air. She tucks Finn’s blanket further around the boys, sprawled slightly over each other, and smiles gently.

The window is only open a sliver, whistling slightly as the wind blows through, and Rey doesn’t hesitate before throwing it wide, knowing the old things require a bit of force to open. The yelp that comes from just outside is completely unexpected.

Rey shoves her torso out the window in shock, searching for the source of the noise, expecting a frightened cat perhaps. What she finds is empty air and an undisturbed street, dimly lit by one of the many lamps. Rey leans a bit further out in case she’s missed the poor creature she’s frightened, but comes up with nothing. Shaking her head, she straightens, dismissing it to the beginnings of dreaming, it being so late.

“That was rude,” comes a voice from somewhere to her left, which makes precisely no sense. Still, when she turns, Rey finds a boy clinging to the side of the building. He’s a rather skinny boy, elbows and knees more than anything, in the way of boys who haven’t nearly finished growing yet. His ears are the next thing she notices, partially hidden by a mop of unruly black hair and sticking out a bit from his head anyway. The third thing – which she really should have taken note of before – is that he doesn’t appear to be standing on anything, but rather floating in the air.

At the realization, Rey makes a noise that some might call a squeak, before clapping her hands over her mouth and taking a surprised step backward.

“Well,” the boy says, climbing in the window after her to perch on the sill. “Aren’t you going to apologize?”

“I…” Rey finds herself at a loss for words for a moment, but then the self-satisfied grin on his face rankles and Rey finds her voice. “And what, precisely, am I meant to be apologizing for?” she hisses. “I wasn’t the one creeping about outside of folks’ windows. What are you, a peeping tom?”

Rey shoves an accusatory finger into his chest, then snatches it back immediately. The curious clothing she can’t quite make out feels like…leaves. But that’s absurd.

“My name’s not Tom,” the boy says indignantly, rocking back with the force of her finger in his chest, then forward again to peer at her. “It’s Ben. And I wasn’t peeping, I was listening.”

“Oh, that’s very different, of course,” Rey says, arms crossing. “Well,my name’s Rey, and you’d best leave before someone meaner than me finds you here and starts really inquiring about what you’ve been doing.”

“I told you. Listening.”

“Listening to what, pray tell?”

“Your story,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “It was quite good, but you didn’t finish it.”

“Well, no, it’s not -” Rey cuts herself off. “You were listening to my story?”

“Yes.” He appears to be completely unashamed of himself, this Ben character. He stands, nearly as tall as Poe though twice as gangly, and starts exploring the room with no care for the inhabitants. Rey has a feeling his voice had only been lowered because hers was, not for any caution. Something about him strikes her as lacking in caution entirely, in fact.

“Who are you?” Rey asks, wonderingly. The shifting light from outside shows an odd sheen over his clothing that must actually be made of leaves, vines wrapped about his legs and arms and woven throughout his strange garments. She catches sight of what looks like a dagger at his waist, though it appears a bit oversized and clumsily constructed. He’s barefoot and apparently unbothered by it, pushing toys and discarded clothes with his toes when they’re in his path. He stops at the head of Finn’s bed, staring curiously down at Poe’s open-mouthed snoring for a moment before turned to face Rey where he stands.

“I told you, I’m Ben,” he says bluntly. “Do all storytellers pay attention so poorly?”

Rey makes an insulted noise, stomping over to him as soundlessly as possible. Something in her face must show how truly angry she is, because the boy rounds the bedframe, putting Finn and Poe between them and speaking fast.

“You _are_ a lovely storyteller,” he says hastily, doing nothing to assuage Rey’s anger. “I listen all the time, you have the best stories, that’s why I come, you see. Nothing will do but for me to tell the boys when you’ve come up with a new one.”

“The boys?” Rey asks scathingly. Finn’s bed in her way is only a momentary distraction, but he keeps talking.

“The lost boys.” He circles the bed, keeping it between them and his eyes on her. “My Lost Boys. In Neverland.”

“What in blazes is Neverland?” Rey demands, barely controlling her voice.

His eyes light up, a slow grin making it’s way over his face, and Rey stops where she stands. There’s something about it, the way he’s smiling and what it does to his eyes, that makes Rey think _Ben_ instead of _the boy_.

“Neverland is everything in dreams, but real.” The way he says it, with complete faith, Rey can’t help but believe him. For all that Ben claims she’s a grand storyteller, he has her transfixed with nothing but a few words and the strength of his conviction. “There are jungles and deserts and a whole forest full of creatures. There are no grown-ups, but there are pirates. And Indians and mermaids and fairies... You’ve never seen anything like it.”

She tries to come up with something to say, but that’s impossible. Such a place couldn’t exist, so he must be mad. Rey’s never met a mad person before.

“You could come see it,” Ben offers, his voice taking on a higher pitch with excitement. “I could bring you there, you could tell the boys your story, tell us all how it ends.”

Rey thinks for a moment that he’s leaning forward in his enthusiasm, but he ought to have fallen with the angle he’s pitched at, and when Rey looks, his feet aren’t touching the floor.

“How are you doing that?” she asks faintly, staring at where he’s floating three inches above the ground.

“Doing what?”

“That,” she insists, pointing at his feet.

“Oh,” he shrugs and levitates a bit higher. “Flying. Anyone can fly.”

“Bollocks,” Rey says before she can remember to be ladylike at all. He grins, sharp and pleased.

“I can teach you.” Ben leaves the realm of possibility entirely, coming up off the floor and reorienting lazily so he’s hovering on his stomach, mostly above Finn’s bed. That’s the scene Poe (and shortly thereafter, Finn) wakes up to, a strange boy hovering over the bed, grinning at a star-struck Rey.

“What in bloody hell -” Poe manages to get out before Finn wakes up to his hissed expletives, smacking him in the chest as he wakes ungracefully. It shocks Rey out of whatever trance she’d been in, hushing the boys quickly as Ben’s feet touch back down on the floor beside her.

“He says he’s from Neverland,” Rey explains in the face of Finn’s confused questions and Poe’s silent glare. “He can teach us to fly.”

“Well, I said I’d teach _you_ to fly,” Ben corrects under his breath. The boys ignore him, looking at Rey instead, who is in turn ignoring his rudeness on purpose. She’s already come to realize he doesn’t seem to be able to help himself from being rude.

“People can’t fly,” Finn insists, unshakably certain enough that Rey hesitates, but she’d seen Ben floating outside the orphanage and over the bed just moments ago. If this is all a dream, it’s a very elaborate one, and Rey will terribly put out when she wakes.

“Yes, they can,” Ben shoots back, the picture of a petulant boy, but then he proves it by shooting nearly to the roof of the hall. Rey has to clap her hands over her mouth again to muffle her shout of delight. Glancing around, none of the other children have woken beyond a bit of grumbling, so they ought to be safe from the mistresses.

“I want to try!” Finn whisper-shouts, scrambling out of bed, and Ben’s face takes on the smug grin Rey doesn’t particularly care for, arms crossed over his skinny chest in triumph where he hangs in midair. Poe nearly climbs Finn in his haste to stand as well. Rey bites her lip to keep from grinning in the same self-satisfied way as Ben, though she’s sure her smile is considerably less irritating.

It’s almost a tragedy that has the mistresses running before Rey stops Finn from leaping off the bed altogether, only barely managing to keep Poe on his feet as well.

“What’s the trick to it?” Rey asks, face tipped up to Ben. “There must be something you know that we don’t to fly like that.”

He sinks slowly, looking pleased at Rey’s admission that Ben knows something they don’t, though that much ought to be obvious. It isn’t as if Rey would be spending her time hanging around one of London’s many orphanages if she could _fly_.

“You have to think happy thoughts,” he says simply. As though it’s simply a matter of thinking hard enough. “Happy thoughts lift you and bad thoughts make you sink.”

“Simple enough,” Poe says, and then closes his eyes, his face screwing up after a moment. “It doesn’t work,” he accuses after a few silent seconds of what is clearly an earnest effort to think hard about happy thoughts.

“Oh, right.” Ben snaps his fingers, then dashes to the window and leaps out of it before any of them can say another word.

“Ben!” Rey almost doesn’t remember to control her volume as the three children race to the window.

“What?” He’s right there, looking vaguely offended to be stalled. It makes for a completely nonsensical sight – a lanky boy dressed in greenery, frowning as he hangs some twenty feet above the street below the window.

“Where are you going?”

“I need Hux,” he says, explaining nothing and already turning to be off again. “I’ll be right back.”

He shoots off into the night, moving much faster than Rey had seen him do before, and she’s left blinking with her brothers after him, wondering vaguely if she didn’t make him up.

“You both saw him, yes?” Rey asks it quietly, like anything above a breath of a whisper might break the spell. Beside her, Poe nods dumbly.

“Weird guy in leaves,” Finn confirms. “He flew.”

“That’s what I thought.”

They’re convened on Finn’s bed when he returns, Rey having told the boys Ben claims to come from some place called Neverland that might be straight out of a storybook. When he flies in through the window, Ben is accompanied by a small, swiftly moving light that slams into Finn’s forehead, making him yelp.

“What the -” The light comes for Poe next, forcing him to duck out of the way. Ben’s swoops in to catch the damn thing before it can make a proper turn, cupping it in his hands.

“Hux,” Ben snaps at the flickering light between his fingers. “Knock it off.”

“That’s…” Rey trails off, boggling at the sight. “That’s Hux?”

“Yeah.” Ben looks peeved, still glowering at the light in his hands. “He’s an ass.”

Turning his palms open, Ben catches Hux between his fingers, and Rey prods Finn and Poe into looking with her. Caught between Ben’s fingers is a tiny, glowing man clad in the same greenery as Ben, only much smaller. He’s glaring at Rey something fierce, face and hair both glowing red, gossamery wings held tightly so he can’t fly in Finn or Poe’s face again. After a moment, he lets out a stream of high-pitched noises that Rey has to guess is profanity, both from his expression and from how Ben looks torn between delight and embarrassment. She’s seen a similar look on enough boys’ faces to know it by now.

“That’s quite enough,” Rey says firmly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Just because I’ve never met a fairy doesn’t mean I’ll let you be terrible for being new.”

The delight takes over on Ben’s face, while Finn and Poe both swallow laughs. They’ve known Rey long enough to be unsurprised by her unwillingness to put up with insults from anyone. The cursing gets redirected at them, Finn frowning while Poe makes a face in response.

“He’s a pixie, actually,” Ben corrects her, with no shortage of superiority. “And if you don’t want him to attack you, you won’t call him a fairy. They’re at war.”

“They’re at _war_?” Poe asks, eyes going wide. Rey would never have thought she’d see Poe interested in something like fairies, but she supposes a war between fantastical creatures would interest any boy, fairies being girly things or not.

“Yes,” Ben says, impatiently flapping a hand about as if to wave away the subject. “Now do you want to fly or not? You can’t get to Neverland any other way and Hux won’t cooperate forever.”

Rey would hardly call it cooperating, what the pixie’s doing, but they all agree quickly. Ben makes them stand still in a line, dousing them with pixie dust - it looks more like solid light than any sort of dust Rey has ever seen, and it makes the top of her head and the tips of her fingers tingle like static electricity. Ben seats himself on the foot of the bed afterward, looking satisfied, and releases Hux. The pixie whirs around Ben’s head, messing his hair about and tittering his annoyance before perching over Ben’s shoulder to sulk in midair.

“Well,” Ben says expectantly. “Give it a try.”

“What do we do exactly?” Poe asks, arms held out slightly to the sides as though he expects himself to sprout wings or something.

“Think about something amazing,” Ben says, crossing his legs under himself and waiting. “Something happy enough to lift you up.”

They’re quiet for a moment or two, the soft sounds of other sleeping children the only noise. Rey thinks there must be some kind of magic tonight anyway for them to not have woken anyone else and not have had any of the mistresses pop in unexpectedly.

Finn rises first, his feet leaving the ground by fractions of an inch, but Rey and Poe don’t notice until Ben makes an approving noise, their own eyes screwed shut as they think hard about happy things. When they do turn to look, Finn is a full six inches off the floor, looking both frightened and gleeful, and he shoots a bit higher up into the air when he sees the joyous look on Poe’s face. Poe himself follows after a second, catching Finn easily, the two boys rising to touch their fingers to the ceiling.

Rey takes longer, enough that she starts to get frustrated with herself, and Ben sees it. He swats Hux out of his way when the pixie flits in front of him as he stands, going to Rey’s side.

“You can do it,” he says, voice hushed and it makes Rey’s breath stall for reasons she can’t find a name for. “You can fly away from here, you just have to want it. I can show you how. Trust me.”

Rey feels his hand on her waist, the other hand twining fingers through hers, and she’s somehow found herself looking into Ben’s eyes long before she notices she’s no longer standing on her feet. His pleasure creeps into his eyes first, so dark they’re nearly black in the darkness, but sparking with innocent mirth a heartbeat before he smiles.

“I told you you could do it.”

Rey’s gaze jerks away from Ben to look at the floor some few feet below her, and she catches his shoulders with her hands, biting her lip to hold in a nervous laugh. They rise to meet Finn and Poe, Rey’s head bumping against the ceiling briefly. Hux follows, a golden blur around Ben’s shoulders, settling to hover so close to Ben’s nose he goes cross-eyed looking at the pixie.

“Alright, yes, I know.” Ben’s eyes uncross, looking at Rey, Finn, and Poe in turn and settling on Rey once more. “We’ve got to go. Stay close, and remember, it’s the second star to the right and straight on til morning.”

That’s all the warning they’re given, and then Ben is ducking to leave out the window, the three orphans scrambling to follow him with their new-found and incredibly wobbly powers of flight. It’s a blessing that Hux glows like he does, because they find him and Ben with ease, Poe putting on speed after Rey points them in the right direction. Rey manages to hang on to Poe’s ankle, Finn’s hand around her own, and Poe catches Ben by the ankle in turn when they catch up. He turns for a moment in surprise, looking puzzled to see the children trailing after him before his face clears, looking quite proud instead.

“Don’t let go,” Ben warns, and then they’re moving much faster, so quickly that the buildings begin to blur. Rey loses sight of the London streets before she can even think to bid them farewell. The dark night sky becomes a blanket of stars, folding around them in all directions, planets and swirls of starlight and impossible sights sliding past them as Ben races onward and they all hold on for dear life.

When it seems as though all the breath will leave Rey’s body from the sheer impossibility of her surroundings, it all simply stops and they pop into a clear sky, pale blue fading in over the blush of breaking dawn, fluffy white clouds all around them. Ben falls head-first into just such a cloud, taking Rey, Finn, and Poe with him, the four of them scattering on the downy surface. Rey knows that her science teacher has said that clouds are cold and made of water, but that doesn’t appear to matter to this one. It feels like falling into a mass of candy floss, but far less sticky.

She follows Ben up the rise of cloud, on elbows and knees with Finn and Poe beside her, and she lets out an involuntary exclamation of wonder at the sight below them. It might be a very small country or otherwise a very large island, surrounded by crystal clear ocean on all sides, and covered - as Ben had said - in forests and jungles and deserts and everything in between. The sky looks to be made up of two parts bright blue and one part perpetual rainbows, colors arcing over the island in huge swaths. There is indeed a pirate ship within view, though Rey is guessing at the piracy, being too far up to spot the skull and bones flag that would make her sure. They’re so high, it’s impossible to make out details, but at the sight of it, Rey can’t help but believe that Ben had told the truth about this place - it was something out of a child’s dream.

“Are those the pirates?” Poe asks, pointing at the ship below them, hardly the size of a small toy to their eyes. Ben pulls out a spyglass from the winding vines at his waist, checking the view himself before handing it over to Poe to see.

There’s no one at the orphanage who knows as much as Poe does about ships and sailing, and he shows it, calling out the details of the pirate ship and letting out a low whistle. His expression, when he lowers the glass and guesses at the speed such a ship might manage, is envious and fascinated. Rey makes to take the glass from him and have a look herself, but before she can get a proper look, a cannon ball comes hurtling through the air straight toward them. Finn and Poe roll away to one side, while Ben rolls with her in the opposite direction, the cannon ball splitting the cloud neatly in two. She’s trapped for an instant under his weight, and then Ben zips up and away.

“Hux, get Rey to the Lost Boys” he orders first, hovering for a few seconds before the disintegrating cloud. “I’ll take care of this.”

In the wake of Ben flying off to deal with the pirates, Rey loses track of Finn and Poe, but she can’t feel terribly bad about it, what with hanging onto the remains of a cloud. She forgets, in the act of falling, that she can fly just as much as she forgets her brothers will be falling just as she is. Hux is nowhere to be found, the golden light of his glow hard to follow in the brightness of the sky anyway, so Rey falls with nothing to guide her.

She does try to hold on for as long as she can, yelling near senselessly, and only truly begins to fall when the pale wisps of cloud finally slip from her grasp. She shrieks, hysterically wondering how anyone is meant to think happy thoughts when so high up with the unfamiliar jungle rushing up to meet her, and that is how she remembers she can fly at all. Little good it does her, because Rey hardly manages to level out, waving her arms about like stabilizing wings, before a small flock of arrows comes rushing toward her. She’ll feel terribly embarrassed about it later, but Rey’s happy thoughts flee from her too fast to stop and she falls into a dead faint even before one arrow reaches her. At least, she thinks in the instant before losing consciousness, Rey won’t have to be aware of dying.


	2. The Island Come True

Hux doesn’t listen to Ben’s order, because, after all, a pixie is under no compunction to follow instructions he does not wish to, and though Hux has thought of Ben as his ally for a great long while, he is by no means sworn to obey the boy. And he has a rather strong dislike for the children Ben has foisted on him. Hux, being a pixie, is neither blessed with long memory nor the ability to be taken by a variety of emotions at once. Being so small, it is terribly difficult for pixies to feel more than one thing at a time, and so Hux at this moment, was all resentment. Nevermind that he had never liked any of the Lost Boys when they first arrived and always warmed to them eventually. Hux meant to be rid of the troublesome trio Ben had brought along with them back to Neverland, and he knew just the way to do it.

In the time it takes Rey to lose her grip on the clouds, Hux has already made it to the jungle and located the Lost Boys, a constant hum in the net of his own small bit of magic. Datoo, Kaplan, Mitaka, Resdox, and Rodinon are all together, making Hux’s task all the simpler. He zooms to a halt in front of the boys, speckling all of them in fragments of pixie dust for a moment and making Kaplan sneeze.

“Hux, where’s Ben?” Resdox pipes up, over the chorus of the boys welcoming Hux back to Neverland. They don’t go with Peter on his adventures back to Earth, so it’s always a joyous welcome back when Ben and Hux return with stories, but Hux’s usual smug pleasure at his awaited return is replaced with animosity for the moment. He charges forward with his plan to dispatch of Rey, and her brothers shortly thereafter. Ben has already forgotten the boys, letting them fall to their fates while he flies off to fight the pirates. Surely with Rey dead, Ben will soon forget about Finn and Poe as well, and Hux won’t have to bother with them at all. The jungle will kill them handily enough.

In his own language, Hux tells them about Rey, the creature Ben wants them to shoot down. He knows it’s a bad thing to do, he even knows Ben will be upset, it’s only that Hux doesn’t care. He has no room to care in with all his anger. The Lost Boys are not terribly bright to begin with either, and so they listen to Hux without question. Hux brings the raucous group to the edge of a clearing where they might have the best aim, points out the white spot in the sky that is Rey’s falling form, and eggs them on.

There is no moment of doubt for Hux, being filled up as he is already with his goal, and he only feels a flood of even more annoyance when not a one of the boys manages to actually shoot Rey. She falls anyway, crashing to the jungle floor in a dead faint, and Hux viciously hopes she’s broken her neck in the fall. The boys, mistaking her faint for a successful shot, go racing off to where she’s fallen, shouts of triumph in their wake.

They make it to Rey only a handful of seconds before Ben touches down, circling around the girl uncertainly. They’re not so dim as to believe Rey is anything but a person now that they can see her up close, and so Hux hides while they mutter their surprise about the girl. He may not have any regrets for his actions, but Hux is smart enough to know it would be wise to let the boys take the fall when Ben sees her body. His anger would pass swiftly enough, as it always did, but Hux has no desire to weather one of Ben’s rages any more than he must. He waits in the shelter of the nearby bushes while the boys crowd around Rey, silently hoping she won’t stand again.

“Boys, I’m back.” Ben touches ground outside the circle of the Lost Boys, radiating satisfaction from having successfully flummoxed the pirate crew. The group jumps as one, whipping around to face their leader with badly concealed guilt on their faces. “And I have great news,” he goes on, oblivious. “I have a new story, and even better, I brought you the storyteller. She’s -”

“Dead,” Mitaka cuts in. Not the bravest boy, he is quite often the most blunt, and Hux begrudgingly respects him for it. At his comment, the boys part, revealing Rey’s still body in the leaves. A hush falls over them as Hux buries himself further in his cover. From here, he can see Ben’s face go blank a moment before fury overtakes his expression.

“Who did this?” he demands, cold and sharp.

“It was us, Ben,” Kaplan says, stepping forward more bravely than Mitaka’s bluntness. “We killed her.”

The dagger at Ben’s waist leaves its sheath with no more prompting than that, and the boys know the punishment for accidentally killing someone is death. They put on brave faces - as well as they can manage - eyes screwed closed and backs stiff in the face of Ben’s rage. It’s no use running when the whole island is his, nonsense to try to fight, and Hux looks away. They’ll have new boys soon enough. The silly creatures can’t seem to stop getting lost in any case, though it may take a while before the Lost Boys reach the same numbers they’ve achieved recently.

Hux is too far away to hear it, but Rey must have made some sort of noise, because the next thing Hux hears isn’t the sounds of violence, but gasps of surprise. When he looks, the boys as well as Ben are huddled over Rey in a circle. Hux hears one of them exclaim that she lives, and he barely manages to keep himself from tearing apart the leaves around him in frustration. He’s more composed than that, of course, but it is a near thing, the twigs and leaves heating with the force of his anger.

“We’ll carry her to the house,” Ben orders. “Hands?” They all shove their hands forward, revealing grubby palms. In comparison to Rey’s nearly pristine nightgown, they look terribly filthy. “Nevermind,” Ben says after a moment. “We shall build a house around her instead.” The boys hop to, shouting suggestions of chimneys and door knockers and all manner of frivolous things as they scramble for building materials. Resdox and Rodinon pause, whispering something into either of Ben’s ears and then racing off again, and Hux can tell from the look on his face that it isn’t good news.

“Hux!” Ben drags out his name into a call, while Hux groans silently to himself. He may not have sworn any allegiance to Ben, but he knows as well as the boys do that the land itself minds Ben’s whims, so it’s foolhardy to resist him for long. “Armitage Hux!”

At the use of his full name, Hux reluctantly abandons his hiding place, flitting down to Ben in the clearing. Behind him, the Lost Boys are busy at work with their building, ignoring their leader and his pixie.

“Did you do it, Hux?” Ben asks, not one to mince words. Hux doesn’t bother pretending he doesn’t know what Ben means. Ben isn’t that stupid, and Hux doesn’t feel bad enough to deny it anyway. The stupid girl is going to throw everything into chaos and Hux still thinks he was right to try to be rid of her and her useless brothers. So he simply nods decisively, head held high. Ben knows him well enough he ought to know Hux doesn’t do things he’ll regret, so if he’s expecting an apology, he’ll be sorely disappointed.

“Then I don’t want to see you anymore,” Ben snaps. Hux falters where the flutter of his wings keeps him airborne. All this over a silly girl? “You are banished forever, Hux. Get out of my sight!”

The anger and resentment floods out of Hux, making room for betrayal and disappointment. He’s never quite followed Ben’s orders, but they’ve always worked well together, and Hux is nearly sure Ben doesn’t mean it when he says ‘forever’, but the lack of loyalty stings. Still, Hux is no simpering female, so he doesn’t do anything like let his wings droop and fly off in a mood. He simply makes the rudest gesture he can think of in Ben’s direction and zooms away into the forest to wait for Ben’s temper to cool.

+

Rey awakes under shifting green shadows, deep and cool, and blinks in confusion at the sight of a low roof above her, made almost exclusively of raw wood and huge leaves wound together with vines and what appears to be mud. In the distance, she can hear faint voices. She shifts to sit up, disturbing the bed of leaves and feathers around her, and the voices cease, replaced by hurried shushing, followed by a knock on a door. She sits up fully, then stands, the roof of her tiny house only a few inches above her head, just enough that she can fit comfortably.

The sight that greets her when she opens the door is of a small group of boys, all clad in a mishmash of skins and greenery, some of them even wearing a piece or two of real clothing. Not a one of them is older than eleven, by the looks of them, and all of them are blatantly trying to look as pathetic and adorable as humanly possible.

“Miss Rey,” one of them starts. “For you, we built this house with a chimney. Please be our mother.” The rest join in the plea as a chorus, falling to one knee with clasped hands as a unit. Rey blinks in surprise, looking around at the boys, bewildered.

“Oh, well,” she says finally. “I have no experience.”

“Do you tell stories?” another asks, perhaps the smallest of the group.

“Yes.”

“Then you’re perfect!” the same boy cries, earnest pleading on all of their faces.

“Very well.” Rey grins, pleased at the showing of admiration for her. “I will do my best.”

A shout of joy goes up following her agreement, and Rey is nearly tackled by the boys in their rush to hug her. Then, unexpectedly, one of the taller boys slips a blindfold around her eyes and Rey makes a noise of protest.

“Sorry about this,” a voice says, sounding genuinely apologetic. “We have to be cautious with pirates around.”

“They’d gut us right away if they found us,” another pipes up.

“I suppose that’s alright,” Rey says carefully, following the boys around her hurrying them along through the forest. “Where are we going?”

“To meet Father!”

Rey can’t actually properly respond to that, having tripped over a root in her blind state, and she feels a flicker of annoyance for the lack of care taken. But, she supposes, perhaps that is why they are in need of a mother, lacking the manners to make sure she doesn’t trip over roots on her way. And then she can’t respond at all, because the blindfold is slid off of her head and she sees a bright grin before being pushed just hard enough to go sliding down through the undergrowth of a tree.

The hidden opening gives way to a system of cleverly constructed slides following the natural curves of a root system belonging to the most massive tree Rey has ever seen, even in books. Her shout of surprise transforms into one of delight as the ride down becomes more fun than shocking, finally landing with a good-natured shriek in a mass of pillows and feathers. She rolls, slightly breathless, onto her back and levers herself up to take in her surroundings.

The place they’ve brought her to is a house made from the hollowed out base of the tree, high-ceilinged and littered with toys and clothes and weapons, all the evidence that a group of rowdy boys lives here. They all come tumbling shortly after her, yelling as they land all around the tree house in various states of balance from their slide down. Rey can feel her eyes nearly falling out of her skull trying to see everything at once, and then her eyes land on Ben, sitting sideways in a large chair, looking like a king surveying his lands.

“Discipline!” Ben shouts, launching himself from the chair and pulling a sword from a scabbard dangling from one of the arms. “We must discipline the children before they try to kill you again.” He marches toward Rey, a smirk on his face that says he’s only play-acting, helping her to her feet anyway. “In fact,” he goes on, “we should kill _them_.”

The boys look around at each other with half-frightened expressions, jumping and running for cover when Ben whips around to face them with a fearsome war cry, sword raised. Rey lets him chase them for a moment, dusting off her nightgown while the boys yell and run.

“Ben!” she calls when she’s collected herself. Calling his name is all it takes to make Ben stop in his tracks, turning to face her where he stands on a long table in the center of the room. “I agree that they’re horrid boys, but if you kill them, they’ll only think they’re important.”

The boys all offer their agreement, nodding along and hiding ineffectually behind chairs and each other in the wake of Ben’s attack.

“I suggest something much worse,” Rey goes on, pleased with her own cleverness. She snaps a flower off of a nearby vine, one that she can use to catch drips of water from the rocks around them. “Tonic.”

The boys send up a round of horrified noises, practically climbing the table as she goes on.

“The most ghastly stuff,” she says, grinning over her pretend cup of tonic. “Bitter and cold, it’ll be so good for them.”

“Kill us, please!” A few of the boys have begun tugging on Ben’s belt, the taller boy looking proud of Rey’s proposed punishment. He must have a bit of a mean streak to him, Rey thinks.

“Oldest first,” Rey announces primly, imitating the nurse she knows so well. “Poe? Poe...Finn! Ben, where are they?”

Ben meets her distress with a baffled crinkle of his eyebrows. “Who?”

+

While Rey is busy falling to the forest floor, Ben forgets all about Finn and Poe, flitting off to engage the pirates on his own and leaving the two boys to dangle precariously from the clouds. Yelling up a storm, it’s rather difficult to think of happy thoughts when Poe’s been having the laws of gravity drilled into his head in classes recently and Finn can’t seem to stop looking down and noticing the ocean is a long ways away.

“Finn!” Hanging on by one hand and struggling to keep his grip on the rapidly thinning clouds, Poe can’t even see Rey or Ben, but he can see Finn about to lose his grip as well. “Take my hand!”

“How is that going to help?” Finn demands, swinging wildly in the wind. It hadn’t seemed quite so strong a few moments ago.

“I don’t know, just do it!”

Finn obeys - or does his best to - but the wisps of cloud slip from his fingers before he can manage to reach Poe and he starts to plummet. Instinctively, stupidly, Poe lets go of the clouds and drops right after him. They meet in midair, catching each other’s hands as the ocean and an arm of jungle speeds toward them. Yelling inarticulately, the boys manage to miss the flat surface of the water and land in trees instead, breaking through the uppermost canopy of tropical jungle and snapping branches and vines as they fall. It’s likely what saves them from a very messy and unpleasant landing, and the two boys finally stop some ten feet off the proper ground, tangling in creeping vines and covered in scratches.

“Poe.” He’s probably hearing the voice of God calling to him. Poe’s lived a good life, if short, but he’s not ready to face Saint Peter, so he keeps his eyes screwed shut until he recognizes Finn’s voice saying his name again. “Poe, we’re alive!”

When he opens his eyes, Poe finds that Finn is right. They are indeed alive, if upside down and wrapped in vines, and Poe can do nothing to stop joyous laughter from bubbling up out of him. Finn joins in, the pair of them jostling each other in relief until a loop of greenery slips around Poe’s waist and he falls a few inches further. Finn yelps, grabbing at him, and Poe stabilizes, considering the ground below more soberly.

“How do we get down?” Finn asks, echoing Poe’s thoughts.

“Well, we’ll have to be careful,” Poe starts, and is almost immediately cut off by his own and Finn’s panicked shouts when the vines around them abruptly release. The tumble to the ground isn’t particularly comfortable, but they wind up in a collapsed pile of limbs, groaning, but largely unhurt aside from some bruising. Perched in the trees, approximately where the two boys had previously been hanging, there is a girl, a young woman, really.

Pale and sharp-looking, despite her somewhat round face, Poe looks at her quizzically as the girl stares down at them with a most unimpressed expression on her face.

“I suppose you’re Lost Boys,” she says, sheathing a knife at her side. Poe loses sight of her a moment later as she slips into the trees, though she should be easier to see, blonde and pale as she is among the greenery. He helps Finn up, who landed rather harder than Poe did, and by the time they’re both standing, the girl has dropped to the ground as well. She’s taller than either of them, nearly a grown up, if Poe had to guess, and she’s dressed in very different clothing from Ben. Her exclusion of herself from them as Lost Boys and the tanned hide of her clothing makes Poe think she might be one of the Indians Ben spoke of, though she doesn’t look like one at all. 

“Come along,” she says briskly. “We’d best get you back to Ben before he starts a war again.”

“Wait!” Finn shouts after her retreating back, scrambling to follow with Poe. “Who are you? Are you an Indian?”

She spins to grimace at them, then rolls her eyes, walking on at a more reasonable pace. “You must be very new. Ben is the only one who insists on calling us that. My name’s Phasma.”

“You don’t _look_ like an Indian,” Poe chimes in. “And that doesn’t _sound_ like an Indian name.”

“Well, that's because we're not,” she snaps, glowering venomously. “We call ourselves Troopers, and you ought to as well. You’ll catch on soon enough. Just don’t go telling Ben we took you captive. The last war just ended, and I’d like some time to patch things up before we play again.”

Bewildered, Finn and Poe glance at each other, but Phasma doesn’t seem to be waiting for them, so they hurry after her, questions or no. She does seem to know where she’s going, and Rey is probably with Ben if she’s anywhere. They really ought to find her now that they’re not falling to their deaths anymore.

+

It takes some reminding, but Rey does manage to get Ben to recall that her brothers had come with them to Neverland, and she hasn’t seen them since they were perched on a cloudbank together. They must have fallen, he reasons, when Ben had left to fight off the pirates after the first canonfire. This land is his, and he would know if they were dead, but what fun would it be if there were no secrets? So he must hunt for them, and if anyone will have a clue as to the boys’ whereabouts, it will be the mermaids in the lagoon. At the very least, they’ll be sure to know if a pair of boys fell out of the skies and into the ocean.

Rey brightens somewhat when he mentions the mermaids, and Ben likes the way worry leaves her face, becoming more determined to find Finn and Poe if it will make her happy. She follows closely on their way to the lagoon, leaving the Boys behind. They’re too silly to be around the mermaids - Ben’s misplaced more than a few of them that way. Rey, wondering but clever, stands a much better chance of not being tricked into the waters.

“Oh,” she breathes when a trio of mermaids breaks the surface, hovering with only the crown of their heads and their curious bright eyes above the water, colorful swirls of tail fins beneath. “They’re lovely.”

The glance Ben shoots her must accurately communicate his skepticism, because Rey looks doubtful as the mermaids break the surface more fully, gathering toward the two children on the shore.

“Are they not lovely?”

“To look at, perhaps,” Ben answers. “But they’ll drown you without a thought. They’ll know if Snoke has your brothers, though, and they’ll answer me.”

“Snoke?” Rey asks, the name unfamiliar. “Is that the pirate captain?”

“Yes,” he says, frowning. “He’s a hateful, greedy old man.” He’s distracted from the beginnings of his treatise on the miserable reality that is Captain Snoke by the presence of impatient, curious mermaids. Wet fingers crawl up the stones at his feet, a head cocked in question. The mermaids _will_ answer him, but they are older than Ben, have been a part of Neverland since before his arrival, and they need not come when he calls nor stay when they do come.

Snoke does not have the boys, they tell him when Ben explains what he’s looking for. They are with the leader of the Troopers, landed in her part of the forest this morning, where the jungle trees mix with the ash trees and sycamores and evergreens, a day’s walk from the snows. They are traveling, the mermaids say, slitted eyes unblinking but hooded in the dryness out of their home. Phasma is taking them to him already.

There are only two of them speaking to him, Ben realizes belatedly when he gets his answer, and he turns to find the third with her fingers wrapped tenderly around Rey small wrist. She offers a closed-lipped smile, serrated teeth hidden and she gently eases the girl toward the water’s surface. Rey has a dreamy smile on her own face, uncaring of the cold water as it touches her fingertips.

The noise Ben lets out toward the mermaid is feral, a snarl that promises violence with no specific threat, and the creature releases Rey with a hiss in reply. Her sisters echo her, calling back with shrieks of annoyance as they dart back beneath the water. It’s been an age since they fed on a human, and they don’t take kindly to Ben snatching such a willing meal back from the brink.

“Come on,” he says, ignoring the mermaids. They’ll catch something soon enough anyway. “I know where your brothers are.” He doesn’t, not precisely, but well, close enough. And besides, Ben finds he doesn’t mind scouring the forest with Rey’s hand in his, feeling her flying on the hope that her brothers are alright and soon to be found.

He finds Phasma easily enough, her white hair like a beacon in the growing darkness, and he and Rey descend rapidly, landing hard so that Rey stumbles forward a few steps, then runs to catch her brothers in a hug.

“Oh, I was so worried,” she says, grinning fiercely and, from the looks of it, nearly strangling Finn with the enthusiasm of her hug. Poe’s greater height spares him somewhat, but Finn’s neck is just in reach of her arms, leaving him gagging a bit. He hugs back anyway, ducking for better comfort, and Ben doesn’t acknowledge the twinge in his chest. Family is ridiculous. Families forget about each other all the time, a mass of hugging means nothing.

There’s the flicker of a memory, something that rarely troubles Ben anymore. He knows, distantly, that he had a family once, and perhaps a mother who held him, but she’s merely a blur in Ben’s mind. He knows he ran away when he was very young - he wasn’t lost like the others, but he was forgotten. Ben remembers, watching Rey reunite with her brothers, that he’d had a family and he’d once upon a time flown back home to see them. They’d been older and happier without him, and Ben had never been able to remember where to find them after that first time. He’d like to, sometimes, to spitefully watch them grow old and waste away while Ben remains as he is with the world at his fingertips and all the time he pleases to enjoy it.

He’d started to forget after he couldn’t find them anymore, and more things slip the longer he stays in Neverland. It’s been...many years now. Many Lost Boys come and gone, and Ben doesn’t want to try to recall how long he’s been sinking pieces of himself in this place. He probably couldn’t find the memory of it anywhere, and the thought alone sparks a touch of fear, something Ben doesn’t care for at all. So he does with it what he does with all things he doesn’t care for. He forgets it and thinks about something else.

“I found them in my territory,” Phasma says, giving Ben a topic to focus on that he doesn’t dislike so much. “I didn’t kidnap them to honor our truce, but I’d be within my rights to if I wanted.”

As leader of the tribe that lives on the other side of the island, Phasma can speak for her people as much as Ben can speak for the Lost Boys, and neither of them much wants to start another war so soon. Ben only has a handful of Boys left at the moment and he’s only just acquired Rey and her brothers. There’s plenty of time to play with them before he gets bored.

“I’d be within my rights to come get them back,” Ben fires back, mostly for the sake of having something to say.

“You can have them,” Phasma snaps. “The clumsy idiots would’ve died in the jungle if I hadn’t brought them here.”

“Hey!” Poe says, indignant. “We could’ve...figured it out.” At Finn’s skeptical look, he quiets, petulantly kicking at the dirt instead of arguing further. Phasma’s disdainful look swings away from Poe and over to Rey instead.

“And who is this? Not every day you get a lost girl.”

“Girls are too clever to fall out of their prams,” Ben says absently. “You should know that.” He’s not sure why he says it, only that Phasma, as a girl, must know girls never get lost and forgotten like the Boys. He has a passing curiosity as to how Phasma got here in the first place, but she’s almost a grown up like the pirates, like all of her people are, so it doesn’t matter. What does stick in his mind is that Rey looks pleased at his assessment and partial defense of her. It feels nice, her approval.

“Yes, charming.” Phasma is less impressed, though she does look intrigued for a moment. But Ben has no idea what for, frowning at her in confusion until her expression slides back into vague annoyance and she rolls her eyes. “Here’s to our continued peace, then. For however long it lasts.”

“We’ll have a feast,” Ben decides abruptly. “To celebrate. My new boys ought to meet your people anyway.”

“Fine,” Phasma agrees testily. “Come back at sundown if you insist.”

“Thank you,” Rey pipes up. “For rescuing Finn and Poe.” On either side of her, the boys nod along, Finn more enthusiastically than Poe. Phasma gives her a more appraising look, glancing over her brothers once more, now that they’ve gained a bit more confidence with their small family reunited.

“I like this one,” Phasma says absently, speaking to Ben with her eyes on Rey. “Better manners than your usual lot anyway. Speaking of which, where is that little bastard Hux? He’s usually flitting around causing havoc anywhere you go.”

“He’s banished,” Ben replies flatly, his tone forbidding any further questions. He’d nearly forgotten how mad he was, but the reminder brings up a resurgence of anger. Ben doesn’t always get Hux’s obedience, but he’d been so blindingly angry and - even worse - _sad_ when he’d thought Rey was dead that he’s nowhere near ready to forgive Hux.

“About time.” Muttered under her breath, Ben isn’t sure if Phasma intended for him to hear her comment, though her next statement is clearly meant to be heard. “Bring your boys at sundown like I said, God knows my people prefer our food to yours.” And with that, she goes off back into the forest on light feet, barely a noise left in her wake. She’ll make it back to her people before midafternoon, and Ben should have enough time to get the Lost Boys there before dark.

There’s still enough pixie dust left on Rey, Poe, and Finn for them to fly back, though the boys have a rockier takeoff than either Ben or Rey. Once they’ve got started though, they manage well enough, listening intently as Ben points out the best spots on the island, places where they’ve had particularly good battles, and the like.The boys are fascinated, and Rey is intent on his stories as well, though they’re nowhere near as good as the ones she tells. Ben knows he speaks too fast and he’s forgotten some of the finer points, but he doesn’t bother himself with them. Rey will remember the new battles they have for him, and she’ll tell the stories of them much better than Ben ever will.

The Lost Boys are raucous when they return, shouting welcomes at the two new additions and showing them the best spots where Finn and Poe can keep their things. When they have things, that is. Surely they’ll have skins and feathers and favored stones soon enough, like the rest of the Boys. For now, it’s a messy clamor of voices rising over one another in their excitement and eagerness to be heard. That is, until Ben shouts over all of them, declaring that they are to meet with Phasma and her Troopers on the other side of Neverland and preparations begin immediately.

The alliance with Phasma’s people is real for now, so they don’t go prepared for battle or as a hunting party. The Boys bring weapons, of course, because Neverland is full of surprises, but they go in peace and prepared to celebrate and possibly have a food fight. It’s not unheard of, especially when tensions between Ben’s Boys and Phasma’s Troopers are low. The feast is also a guaranteed dinner, which Ben has been known to forget about from time to time, so the Lost Boys are full of good humor and enthusiasm when they arrive in Phasma’s territory.

Phasma and her people aren’t Ben’s enemy - not the way Snoke is - and they’re even friends sometimes, like tonight. They can unite in celebration and against their common enemy in the pirates, but Ben’s attention wanders without something as exciting as battle to hold his focus. Wandering the outskirts of the celebration, he catches sight of the glowing forms flickering through the trees and it occurs to him that it will soon be the new year for the fairies. Hux and the other pixies won’t be about for the balls and revelries of the fairies, so Ben doesn’t hesitate to peek in on the fairies. They are not _his_ enemies, after all.

They float about in pairs, and Ben doesn’t think about it very hard when he finds Rey among the mix of Boys and Troopers, and beckons her into the forest with him. She hesitates only a moment, watching Poe argue good-naturedly with Resdox and one of the Troopers - a boy taller than Ben himself that looks familiar, but Ben doesn’t try to put a name to his face. Ben doesn’t know any of them besides Phasma, just recognizes something in their faces. He’s far more interested in getting Rey to follow him, anyway.

“Ben?” Rey asks, walking in small, slow steps toward the treeline and away from the light of the fires at her back. He puts a finger to his lips and shushes her gently. Fairies are more skittish than pixies, and he’d rather she get to see them before they fly off. Hesitant or not, Rey follows as Ben leads her further into the trees, linking his fingers with hers to make her keep up.

Neverland has never been so dark as London, where Ben plucked Rey and her brothers from, and the two children find their footing easily, guided by distant flickering fairylight. Rey wouldn’t know it, but they are amongst the fairy court once she walks with Ben into a copse of trees lit almost as brightly as the day. A steady stream of miniscule, winged bodies flits in and out of the largest tree, a massive sycamore hollowed out and kept living by the magic of the creatures that reside within it.

Rey crouches at Ben’s encouragement, so they can both peer into the hollow, where a pair of fairies larger than the rest slowly rotate in the center of the glowing space. Their subjects flutter around them in excited, twirling dances of their own, but the king and queen are a more regal kind. Ben glances at Rey and is surprised to find he doesn’t mind at all that her attention couldn’t be farther from being on him.

The radiant joy on her face steals his breath for a moment, and Ben bites his own lip past a pleased grin, and turns his attention to the fairies Rey can’t take her eyes off of. The central couple is dancing to music that can only be heard by them, on a frequency humans can only imagine. The king takes his queen in his arms and guides her into a graceful arc, dipping backward in ways made impossible for any being without the gift of flight.

Ben’s gaze wanders back to Rey at the thought, as if drawn by a magnet. He almost doesn’t feel the shamefully soft grin on his face until her eyes move up to his face, and Ben has to school his features. In the glow of fairylight, Ben can’t tell exactly, but he thinks Rey’s face turns a bit pink as she glances back down at the dancing couple and then to him again.

Ben smiles as the thought occurs to him. They can fly. And he’s never had a girl to pretend to be a fairy king and queen with. It would be great fun. So he doesn’t look away from her again, instead standing and offering his hand to Rey with his best imitation of a bow.

Rey gets to her feet with only a bit of a stumble over her own imitation of a curtsy. Her hand slips into his, and Ben is fairly sure his other hand ought to go on Rey’s waist, so he puts it there. He takes a step forward, and follows Rey as she rises. Hux hasn’t been around to provide a new dose of pixie dust, but Rey rises anyway, and Ben thinks she must be special. She must be like him to still be able to fly under her own power. She certainly shines brightly enough there must be something special about her.

Neither of them know how to dance, or perhaps they would do a better job of faking it. As it is, they simply spin in the air, as slowly as the fairies in their tree. The shadows deepen as they rise and Ben’s grip on Rey’s waist tightens instinctively, though he knows she won’t fall. He can’t help but hold on anyway, just in case. But then he pushes and sends Rey spinning and her laugh rings delightedly through the trees, drawing fairies to them in a small whirlwind of living lights.

They catch in Rey’s hair at the ends, sending it swirling about her shoulders in the false wind, and Ben’s breath catches as well. He follows her, stalling her turn with his hands around her waist, and the pair of them rise further. They break through the treetops and into undiluted moonlight, where Rey’s skin seems to glow in a soft echo of the fairies below them. Ben feels the inexplicable urge to touch her face, and his mind wanders to the endings of some of Rey’s stories, where the hero kisses the heroine.

“It’s only pretend,” Ben blurts, instead of letting his thoughts continue to wander, and goes on in a less certain tone of voice. “Isn’t it?”

Rey looks at him quizzically, her loose hair shifting over her shoulders. The thin vines she’s wrapped about her nightdress tangle with the ends and she looks like she belongs in his world. Rey could stay, if she would only stop stirring up difficult thoughts, the kind Ben ran away from so long ago.

“That you and I are…” Ben trails off without meaning to, unable to force the words past his lips. As an infant, he’d heard the plans for his future and run, because he never wanted a job and a wife and a family. It’s all well enough to make believe that he is a king and Rey is his queen. Or that they play the parts of Mother and Father to the Lost Boys. But it can’t be real, or…. Or Ben doesn’t know what that would mean.

“Oh.” Rey blinks rapidly, the serene smile on her mouth fading alarmingly fast. “Yes. Of course it is.”

Rey begins to fall, ever so gradually, but fast enough that she slips out of Ben’s arms entirely before he can find a proper reaction to her falling. He swallows uncertainly and follows her back to the ground, feeling as though he’s broken something he doesn’t know how to fix. He hopes - with all the strength he can muster - that he will forget that feeling soon.

+

The fairies, in their reveries, take little notice of anyone who does not seek to actively disturb them, and so they pay no mind to the unusual pair in their midst, watching another, more fitting couple as they float upward in a parody of a dance. The smaller figure would draw attention should he choose to make the smallest nuisance of himself, if only because his kind are at war with the fairies. Hux, flickering a faintly purplish color in his annoyance and unwilling disappointment, alights on a gathering of leaves near the shoulder of his unlikely companion.

The pirate captain keeps careful watch of the scene before him, noting the newcomer with more than a hint of curiosity. A girl is unusual in Neverland, and even then, this particular girl is more unusual still. Ben’s focus on her means the focus of any living thing that calls Neverland home is drawn to her as well, though not as strongly as the boy’s.

“There has been an awakening,” the captain mutters to himself, a neutral statement whose intent is only in its tone. His low, rasping voice warps the phrase into more than passing intrigue, less than a threat. “The boy has found himself a…”

He pauses, lost for what to call the girl. She is more than a girl, clearly, but he doesn’t know her story. He knows the boy perhaps better than any other being on this forsaken island, but this is a situation he has never been presented with. Ben is a selfish boy, his interest never lasting more than a fleeting moment, and the quiet fascination he can just make out on the boy’s face is a foreign one. He hadn’t known Ben could be quietly _anything_.

At his side, Hux offers only a name, what must be the girl’s name, in a dark voice. Well, as dark as a pixie can manage, in any case.

“Rey.” The captain frowns in thought. This may derail his plans. At his side, the pixie huffs and he can practically feel the resentment rolling off Hux’s small form. Hux has weathered so many of Ben’s passing fancies that his absence from Ben’s side is a surprise. It’s further proof that this girl has had a more profound effect on Ben than anyone could have anticipated, and the captain can only think it will mean bad news for the rest of them.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” the captain grumbles. He’ll never be able to get to the boy with Ben distracted by this ‘Rey’, and he and his crew will be trapped in the deep waters surrounding Neverland into perpetuity. He is not a patient man, nor is he prone to questioning the means of a plan should the ends be of enough import. And so he turns to Hux, a previous annoyance and ally of his adversary, and speaks with civility.

“I think you and I should talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we exit the stuff I had planned and move into the plot I won't be borrowing too hard from other sources! It's probably pretty evident by now that most of my inspiration comes from the 2003 live action movie, but here is where that film and I shall part ways. The rest should be a little less predictable...

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter is...almost done, but I've promised myself i will stay a chapter ahead of this story before I post anything, so it might not be for a while. Should be around four chapters, but I'll have a better idea by the time next chap rolls around. Please let me know what you think! This one's close to my heart!


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